Making art in the studio, listening to music or NPR and thinking, all the time thinking. It could be about red versus orange or politics or the world collapsing around us or growing old or (most probably) wondering what to have for dinner.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Here I am again after a long break. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

I've been taking time for reflection, reading and thinking about ideas for work. I've been making sketches and notes galore and have made quite a few new pieces that I think can lead to two or three series.

My intention was to reintroduce some elements in my work that I had used a while ago, and I wanted to integrate encaustic as one element rather than as the whole story. It has helped me to think of these works as sculpture rather than painting even though they are really more two dimensional than three. The term "constructed paintings" comes to mind since this is what I used to call my works.

I should say that in terms of ideas behind the work that I have been focusing on thoughts of aging, memory loss and mortality as I have been more and more involved with the care of my 92-year-old mother.

I began by combining a circle with a square panel and working from there. The one below is the third piece in the circle/square series and my favorite.

"Crown of Glory", about 25" x 25", encaustic with mixed media. The second one in the series.

"Crown of Glory" detail.

This one was the first I made. It's "The Virgin's One Bare Breast", about 25"H x 24" wide. This one has encaustic, rubber, tacks, coconut fiber, textiles, shells and acrylic paint.

A detail of "The Virgin". The title refers to the way the Virgin Mary was depicted in religious paintings of the 11th and 12th centuries with just one breast exposed and nursing Jesus. The breast was an image of nurturance and fertility (even though the breast was usually pretty peculiar looking and non-anatomical).

So these three pieces are the beginning of what may be one series. I'll show you more of other series later.

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What am I reading?

I'm always reading something and now it's another one of Robert Caro's volumes of Lyndon Johnson's biography. "Passage of Power" is the fourth volume in this monumental series and covers the years 1958 to 1964. This period of Johnson's life was full of extremes of power - from the peak as Majority Leader of the Senate, then fading as he failed to actively campaign for the presidential nomination in 1960. Once he joined Kennedy on the 1960 Democratic ticket, his southern connections gave Kennedy the win, but Johnson sank into powerless oblivion and became the butt of jokes by "the Harvards." On Kennedy's death, Johnson ascended to the presidency and experienced another series of extremes of political power.

Caro is a master of biography and is always interesting and informative. I recommend this volume (and series) to anyone who follows politics and wants to know some background on how we got where we are today.